Transporter Refuelled is more fun than you expect...

You would be forgiven for thinking, for the first few minutes of this rebooted action franchise, that the ads are running long and you're watching a particularly violent Audi commercial. It turns out that's actually the film. The Transporter Refuelled is ludicrously glossy and seriously heavy on product placement, but occasionally someone says something so stupid and on-the-nose that it would never pass quality control at a major ads agency, and reminds you that this is another film from Luc Besson's EuropaCorp action stable.

Ed Skrein stars as a new Frank Martin, an ex-SAS type who now specialises in couriering packages of dubious legality around Europe. He has a code of unbreakable rules, which aren't worth explaining because he always breaks them. This time he's hired by a sultry prostitute called Anna (Loan Chabanol), who needs him to essentially act as a getaway driver as she plots revenge on the gangster pimp who exploited her for decades. She's the leader of a small, devoted band of trafficked women. They all look like supermodels and act like super-spies, but their elaborate masterplan suggests far more intelligence than the film's ostensible hero. Poor Frank just gets to react to whatever schemes they come up with.

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As a Statham substitute, Skrein isn't bad. He looks like Nicholas Hoult's tougher brother and has the Statham growl down to a tee. But he's not quite as straight-faced; there's the tiny suggestion of a smirk somewhere there behind his grim focus on the mission. Nor does he seem quite as invincible. Despite an early scene where he efficiently dispatches six assailants in a way that proves he's a convincing brawler, he is hewn from more human stuff than the unstoppable Stath.

Complicating things is Ray Stevenson as Frank Senior, a retired spy who will only admit to being an Evian salesman and who keeps getting himself kidnapped. Stevenson seems like he's having a ball, and the snippy, loving father-son dynamic gives the film a pleasantly Last Crusade feel. It's also Frank the Elder who keeps getting himself kidnapped and held hostage rather than the women, which is a breath of fresh air in an otherwise clichéd effort.

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The dialogue is the film's greatest weakness. It frequently feels like the screenwriters wrote a quick holding line, intending to come back and polish a little, and then forget to do a second draft. "I come from an impoverished village," says Anna mournfully of her background, drawing laughter rather than sympathy from the audience. With a little wit and polish on such heavy-handed chat this might have had the zip to be something really fun. It also suffers a weird continuity issue. The prologue is set in 1995 and then the action picks up "15 years later" - in what appears to be the modern day. Certainly that's a 2012 Audi with what seems like a thoroughly up-to-date app-controlled electronics system. Was the script sitting around for five years? Did they forget to double-check their working out before submitting the final cut?

Nitpicks aside, the film strains for Fast & Furious levels of glorious idiocy and falls a little short. There's a fun bit with some fire hydrants, but the trailer's big moment - a car jumps into an airport skybridge - seems flimsy by the standards we've come to expect. This can't touch the Fast films, or even the

Transporter's own high watermark of ludicrousness, which remains Transporter 2's insane stunt involving another Audi, a giant electromagnet and a bomb. But as a moderate budget, pleasantly brainless romp, it could be a lot worse. There's fun here amid the stupidity, and the combination of the kick-ass women and Stevenson's sense of lightness allows us to overlook quite a lot of clunky screenwriting.